Elisabeth Moss of 'Mad Men'

Elisabeth Moss, "Mad Men"

Nomination Status: Should have won last year and should still cling to her fourth straight nomination.

In Her Favor: Elisabeth Moss has been nominated twice as Lead and once as Supporting for her work on "Mad Men." Realistically, she should have dropped back to Supporting this year and coasted. Instead, she'll be counting on Emmy voters to remember the season's Peggy-centric episodes and to ignore the weeks and weeks and weeks that she was barely featured at all. Fortunately, with episodes like "The Other Woman," Moss made the most of every second she appeared on the screen.

Working Against Her: Only the "Lead vs. Supporting" issue. Otherwise, Moss is locked in.

Have you heard of the Critics Choice Television Awards? I don't know if their nominations will influence the Emmys at all, but Emmy Rossum was nominated for that this year, so she did get some recognition for that role. Just thought I should clear that up....

Claire Danes probably deserves the win. She's like the Bryan Cranston of Showtime (minus the Emmy wins). She's uncomfortable to watch at times, but you can't look away.

I don't think it will happen, but I would be very happy to see Anna Torv at least get nominated. If the Emmy is supposed to recognize excellent acting, she has proved herself ever since the show introduced multiple universes and multiple versions of Olivia. Each version seems like a fully realized character. Some of the other actresses struggle enough with one version of their character. Torv has nailed, how many? 3? 4?

I think Jessica Pare was more of a lead actress than either Elisabeth Moss or January Jones and I would not be unhappy to see her win. She gave a great performance, newcomer or not.

Whilst I think Jessica Paré is doing a fine job, especially given how much of Season 5 she's had to shoulder, it's just really not comparable to anything the other actresses on that show are doing. For me, she's had some memorable scenes (the sherbet, as you mention, Dan, springs to mind), but she hasn't had any moments where I've been wowed by the performance, unlike, say, Peggy's goodbye to Don, Joan's entire The Other Woman arc, and Betty's Thanksgiving.

And yes to Katie LeClerc - she's great. Daphne was a bit too perfect when the show began, but I liked how LeClerc really nailed some of the more unattractive sides of that character, and how that played off of Bay's relationship and reaction to her.

Anna Torv should be on the list, One Night in October alone deserves it, the scene with the Olivias in the car, showed in 30 seconds the essence of both characters.
Anna created a new Olivia from scratch and had the difficult part to exchange the memories to blue Olivia.
AltLivia was great, watch the scene in 4.17 after AltLinc dies, and Linc walks in the room, in a few seconds every possible emotion on her face.

Last year Anna Torv should have won, this year she should be nominated.

But it seems that Anna Torv will have to wait until she gets a Homeland on cable.

Nothing too controversial: Kerry Washington has more value to Scandal than Julianna Margulies has to The Good Wife. TGW doesn't have enough screentime to service all the characters as is while Scandal needs to find a second character for Washington to share the workload (though some may say President/Chief of Staff/Desmond add up to one). Their performances are about on the same level whatever that means.

It's hard to argue with much, though I do think that as great as Claire Danes was, I'm still taking Bryan Cranston as the performance of the year. I'd rank Danes second and Aaron Paul third. Also, I'm dismayed that the Emmy voters are apparently going to ignore Michelle Dockery's fine work. I had her as the second best performance in the category behind Danes and ahead of Elisabeth Moss. Dockery has a very difficult role, and she pulled it off perfectly. She also does some of the best understated acting of anyone.